compassionate appointment in force or a right to an ex-gratia payment, whereunder an application could be made by the dependent of a deceased employee. What appears from the facts here is that prior to 15th March, 2019, there was no scheme at all in the establishment of the respondent Bank in force extending any kind of a right to compassionate appointment, howsoever limited or circumscribed. The right to compassionate appointment upon introduction of the Scheme w.e.f. 15th March, 2019 was a new found right. In the absence, therefore, of any provision in the Scheme for whatever reason to provide rights for dependents of an employee, who died prior to its introduction, asking for compassionate appointment, there could be no right to compassionate appointment. It has already been pointed out that the right to compassionate appointment is not an inherent right, but one that flows from a Rule or Scheme being in force at the time of the death of an employee in harness. There could be more reason to supply in aid of that interpretation. Once it is held that the right to compassionate appointment is not inherent, but the creature of a Rule, the right of whatever kind it is, originates and culminates on the date of death of the employee in harness. There is no fact surviving the death of an employee in harness on the foot of which, a Scheme or Rule for compassionate appointment introduced at a later date, may afford the dependent a right to consideration. Of course, that kind of a right may arise if the Scheme provides for that right on its own terms. Here, the words employed in Clause 8.1, or for that matter Clause 8.2 of the Scheme, do not envisage cognizance of cases of dependents, where death of an employee in harness has taken place before the Scheme was enforced in the Bank. The employment of the expression in Clause 8.1 "normally be considered upto five years from the date of death" refers to the period of five years of death on a date when the Scheme was already in force in the Bank; not five years or a little short of that time antedating the introduction of the Scheme."
